Thriller 1950-1959
by BrunoBu | created - 02 Sep 2017 | updated - 14 Oct 2018 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Man on a Tightrope (1953)
Approved | 105 min | Drama, Thriller
A Czech circus owner/clown and his entire troupe employ a daring stratagem in order to escape en masse from behind the iron curtain.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Fredric March, Terry Moore, Gloria Grahame, Cameron Mitchell
Votes: 1,838
2. The Crimson Kimono (1959)
Approved | 82 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Two detectives seek a stripper's killer in the Japanese quarter of Los Angeles, but a love triangle threatens their friendship.
Director: Samuel Fuller | Stars: Victoria Shaw, Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta, Anna Lee
Votes: 3,114
3. Compulsion (1959)
Approved | 103 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Two wealthy law-school students go on trial for murder in this version of the Leopold-Loeb case.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Diane Varsi, Bradford Dillman
Votes: 7,508
4. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Not Rated | 161 min | Drama, Mystery
An upstate Michigan lawyer defends a soldier who claims he killed an innkeeper due to temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. What is the truth, and will he win his case?
Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell
Votes: 71,367 | Gross: $11.90M
5. The Ladykillers (1955)
Not Rated | 91 min | Comedy, Crime
Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms on a cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.
Director: Alexander Mackendrick | Stars: Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom
Votes: 31,411
6. The Devil Strikes at Night (1957)
97 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A serial killer strikes again during World War II in Germany. The wrong man is arrested and a detective hunts down the real killer, but justice in Nazi Germany is not so easily administered.
Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten
Votes: 1,583
7. Assignment: Paris (1952)
Passed | 85 min | Drama, Thriller
Cold war intrigue in France and Hungary.
Directors: Robert Parrish, Phil Karlson | Stars: Dana Andrews, Märta Torén, George Sanders, Audrey Totter
Votes: 687
8. They Were So Young (1954)
Approved | 80 min | Adventure, Crime, Drama
A model agency in Rio de Janeiro is actually a front for a white-slavery ring that kidnaps European women and sells them on the South American sex market.
Director: Kurt Neumann | Stars: Scott Brady, Johanna Matz, Raymond Burr, Ingrid Stenn
Votes: 233
9. Under My Skin (1950)
Approved | 86 min | Drama, Sport, Thriller
On the run from gamblers he double-crossed, expatriate jockey Danny Butler tries to justify his son's faith in him as a winner.
Director: Jean Negulesco | Stars: John Garfield, Micheline Presle, Luther Adler, Orley Lindgren
Votes: 390
10. The Gazebo (1959)
Passed | 100 min | Comedy, Thriller
TV writer Elliott Nash buries something under the new gazebo in his suburban backyard. But the nervous man can't let it rest there.
Director: George Marshall | Stars: Glenn Ford, Debbie Reynolds, Carl Reiner, John McGiver
Votes: 2,226
11. Convicted (1950)
Passed | 91 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A D.A. becomes the prison warden where he tries to help an inmate he prosecuted, because he believes his sentence was excessive.
Director: Henry Levin | Stars: Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Millard Mitchell, Dorothy Malone
Votes: 1,488
12. The Tall Target (1951)
Approved | 78 min | Adventure, Crime, Drama
A New York City detective, traveling by train between New York and Baltimore, tries to foil an on-board plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln before he reaches Baltimore to give a major pre-Inauguration speech in 1861.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson
Votes: 2,339
13. Pickup Alley (1957)
Approved | 92 min | Action, Crime, Drama
International narcotics smuggler Frank McNally is trailed through various European countries by U.S. drug enforcement agent Charles Sturgis.
Director: John Gilling | Stars: Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, Trevor Howard, Bonar Colleano
Votes: 641
14. 99 River Street (1953)
Not Rated | 83 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A former boxer turned cab driver has to hide from the police when his badgering wife is murdered by the jewel thief she was having an affair with.
Director: Phil Karlson | Stars: John Payne, Evelyn Keyes, Brad Dexter, Frank Faylen
Votes: 3,439
15. Female on the Beach (1955)
Approved | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Moving into a beach house involves Lynn Markham in mystery, danger, and romance with a beach boy of dubious motives.
Director: Joseph Pevney | Stars: Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway
Votes: 1,418
16. I Confess (1953)
Not Rated | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A priest, who comes under suspicion for murder, cannot clear his name without breaking the seal of the confessional.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne
Votes: 23,277
17. I Want to Live! (1958)
Approved | 120 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A prostitute, sentenced to death for murder, pleads her innocence.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, Theodore Bikel
Votes: 7,368
18. Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958)
Approved | 87 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
At Kimberley Prescott's villa, a stranger shows up and claims he is her brother who supposedly died the previous year in a car accident.
Director: Michael Anderson | Stars: Richard Todd, Anne Baxter, Herbert Lom, Alexander Knox
Votes: 1,468
19. The Weapon (1956)
77 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
A boy accidentally shoots a friend with a gun he found in the rubble of a destroyed building. The gun turns out to be a clue in a ten-year-old murder case.
Directors: Val Guest, Hal E. Chester | Stars: Steve Cochran, Lizabeth Scott, George Cole, Herbert Marshall
Votes: 432
20. City of Fear (1959)
Passed | 81 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A vicious killer escapes from San Quentin with a cannister of what he believes to be heroin but is actually a radioactive substance that threatens all Los Angeles.
Director: Irving Lerner | Stars: Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, John Archer, Steven Ritch
Votes: 1,632
21. Bob the Gambler (1956)
PG | 98 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
After losing big, an aging gambler decides to assemble a team to rob a casino.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville | Stars: Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Guy Decomble
Votes: 13,362 | Gross: $0.02M
22. Inferno (1953)
Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A tough, hard-driving business tycoon suffers a broken leg and is left to die in the desert by his scheming wife and her greedy lover.
Director: Roy Ward Baker | Stars: Robert Ryan, Rhonda Fleming, William Lundigan, Larry Keating
Votes: 1,801
23. My Gun Is Quick (1957)
Approved | 90 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Private eye Mike Hammer passes over beautiful women and corpses to find stolen jewels.
Directors: Victor Saville, George White | Stars: Robert Bray, Whitney Blake, Donald Randolph, Richard Garland
Votes: 760
24. The Whip Hand (1951)
Approved | 82 min | Action, Adventure, Crime
Matt Corbin, a vacationing magazine writer, takes a fishing trip to Minnesota, and stumbles across a lake in which all the fish have mysteriously died. The locals are tight-lipped about it,... See full summary »
Director: William Cameron Menzies | Stars: Carla Balenda, Elliott Reid, Edgar Barrier, Raymond Burr
Votes: 716
25. The Devil Strikes at Night (1957)
97 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A serial killer strikes again during World War II in Germany. The wrong man is arrested and a detective hunts down the real killer, but justice in Nazi Germany is not so easily administered.
Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten
Votes: 1,583
26. Macao (1952)
Passed | 81 min | Adventure, Crime, Drama
Nick Cochran, an American in exile in Macao, has a chance to restore his name by helping capture an international crime lord. Undercover, can he mislead the bad guys and still woo the attractive singer/petty crook, Julie Benson?
Directors: Josef von Sternberg, Mel Ferrer, Nicholas Ray, Robert Stevenson | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, Thomas Gomez
Votes: 3,809
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